A BABY?

Things were quiet last night. No seizures I could detect. We had a good nights sleep from midnight on.

We had a couple of visitors, young and old alike. Jessica went out to celebrate St. Patrick's day (I heard someone call it the Irish Christmas) with her girlfriends. Sandra went home to take James to his basketball playoff game (won, 40-22) and get some well needed rest. Apparently the night before she had made the mistake of telling the nurse that Lauren had a couple of small breakthrough seizures and the nurse wanted to give her a suppository. Sandra refused the treatment which created quite the hub-bub.

Yesterday when I arrived at the room, there was an empty crib in the place where a second bed would be. I joked to Lauren, "they stole your baby!". I was joking because I assumed they were storing it in our room. All the rooms here are doubles but ours has got to be one of the smaller ones. In fact the whole Seashore House is a little older, little smaller, and more worn. While the main hospital has been added to and renovated, the Seashore house is a little tired. Later, a nurse came in and started checking the monitor on the adjacent bed. I asked the nurse, "you aren't going to put a baby in here are you?". She apologised and said that she had talked to the charge nurse about it and that yes, they were. A baby with a 16 year old. I went out to discuss the absurdity of this with the charge nurse and she said that it very rarely happened, but apparently when the main hospital is full, they send kids over to the Seashore House as a last resort. That led to a discussion about matching sexes, room availability, arrival order, acute vs. rehabilitation care, and we compromised that the next baby to come in would go in an empty room (apparently the last in the whole hospital complex which comprises 10 buildings, not to mention that Philadelphia has another children's hospital named St. Christopher's), then the next baby could join that one and when the third baby arrived, we would have to share. Of course, if someone more age appropriate arrived we would gladly share with them also.

Having dodged that bullet for now we settled in to sleep. The nurse comes in to put the pulse-ox monitor on her finger (some call it the E.T. finger, which to kids these days means nothing, especially since Drew Barrymore is old enough to have kids of her own), we settle down, then the nurse comes in again to put the calf massagers on Lauren (and warns us again that the hospital is full and we may be having a roommate, i.e. baby), we settle down, then the nurse assistant comes in to do vital signs, we cannot settle down any more. The nurse assistant asks if I saw a menu anywhere. I ask her if she intends to place an order at midnight and she goes on that it is to order food for tomorrow. I say, its midnight, the room is dark, we are trying to sleep, don't sweat the menu. Then I lay back to stew over the acute care baby that might eventually end up in a neurology patients room who needs rest and rehabilitation. Lauren is crying that she hates the leg massagers and wants to go home. The leg massagers are foam sleeves with Velcro fasteners that go on the calves and they inflate and deflate with air to massage the calves and prevent blood clots. This was important when she had been on her back for three weeks, but now that she is moving around, and getting daily Heparin shots in her stomach to thin her blood, they are obsolete. In fact they could probably ditch the Heparin too but things are in her chart and never get removed. She still gets laxatives, even though they are no longer necessary.

I remove the leg massagers (they could have had them on all day, she is trying to sleep now) and the monitor keeps alarming. Not because there is anything wrong, but because the pulse-ox is poorly attached. There is health care reform for you. When we were here with Spencer and Jessica's malignancies they would put a new one on daily at $100 a pop (18 years ago). Now, they don't change them enough. Since the nurse wasn't reacting to the continuing alarms, I took the pulse-ox off and turned off the monitor. That was about midnight. We had a good nights sleep from midnight on.

The baby in the room still amazes me. Major city, one of the best hospitals in the country, and they are putting acute care infants with 16 year old rehabilitation patients. I love babies, and I want them cared for, but there has to be a better way. Any baby that comes in overnight is either injured or infectious, not what you want rooming with someone who needs R&R. It is mixing apples with oranges and seems like a poor treatment plan to me.